Quite impressed with his book, so far. If you want the German side of the equation concerning WWI, I think this book is indispensable. It's really rather eye-opening.
I didn't know Max Weber was a typical liberal Imperialist(well, that was quite fashionable at the time).
And more you know about its history, more does Hitler appear as a rather 'typical' German product, not as an anomaly.
For example, Kurt Riezler, influential advisor to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, proclaimed that 'the eternal struggle-for obtaining world-domination-was the supreme aim of all nations' (Geiss, p. 33)
'Eternal struggle'. You can't but remember Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'(My struggle)
What about the memerandom which Pan German leaders sent to German Crown Prince(a notorious nationalist) in Oct. 1913;
It
'suggested the abolition of the constitution, suppression of freedom of the press and discriminatory legislation aimed at the Jews' and proclaimed that 'even an unsuccessful war would be preferable to cowardly peace'
Exactly what Hitler achieved, no?
You have to wonder, what kind of Germnay would have emerged had they won the WWI, even without the emergence of Hitler. Even SPD meekly acquiesced to the idea of Weltpolitik. A.J.P Taylor's view in his 'The Course of German History' seems rather perceptive..
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